Why is this taking so long? Well, the truth of the matter is that we are slow. And there have many side trips while waiting for the counter tops to be put in place. I decontructed the dining room area and constructed the bathroom. And we are doing all the work ourselves – staining cabinets, etc.

So here is what we have so far:

Did you notice the pantry? Another side trip. And it is getting filled up already!

I even built myself a little bookcase for cookbooks. (Sorry, the picture is a little fuzzy – oops!)

And I got in a little creativity with my bathroom window which is decorated with Gallery Glass.

It’s almost like decorating a dollhouse, but bigger!

P.S. If you come just for the blog, please check out all the Fall Fun at Bry-Back Manor!

My husband and I have been devoting all of our days to revamping the future home in some hope that we might get moved in at the end of the Summer. One goal for the move is to have a functioning kitchen.

So far we have taken the kitchen from this:

To this:

A functioning bathroom is also in the works. Sorry, no pictures yet.

My days have been filled with construction, but I want to acknowledge the passing of one of the guys in my life. RIP Oliver who lived to a ripe old age. In his prime, he was “in charge” and a complete rapscallion. He will be missed.

Oliver In His Prime

Sandra

P.S. If you come just for the blog, please check out all the Summer Fun at Bry-Back Manor!

I’ve been gardening up a storm, lately, working up slowly to my edible landscape vision. I found these child size furniture pieces and thought they would add a bit of whimsy doubling as pot holders in my mini garden.

Of course, I had to have some “scare cats” for my small plot of corn.

I can’t wait to get this space terraced so that I can expand through out the entire yard!

How about another printable? Some so very seventies wallpaper. Be sure to click to save the full size image.

P.S. This is a bit embarassing and I’m surprised no one called me on it. Apparently, my last post about avocado plants contained an error. I have have two chestnut trees in the making and one avocado. The chestnuts completely fooled me. The seeds are large and I thought they were avocados. Dern those squirrels!

I also made some vegan chocolate chip bars. These were going to be regular chocolate chip bars, but I put them in the oven right before Call the Midwife last night. Big mistake. Don’t bake during a good tv drama. So that left me with not enough eggs for bars and tempura, hence vegan chocolate chip bars.

Growing season is on us and that always gets me excited about fresh herbs and other garden goodies. This year I was surprised to see that three avocado seeds I had stuck in random pot actually sprouted! Now I need to find out if I can get avocados from them. (Maybe that’s too ambitious for Virginia.)

So much for the quiet of country life. Do you have any of these guys where you live?

There is currently a steady hum all day long of frisky cicadas. And at night, the frogs are partying it up. Holy Cow!

Have a great week!

Sandra

P.S. If you come just for the blog, please check out all the goodies at Bry-Back Manor!
Tis the season for Graduation Clipart!

My piles of minis continue to grow smaller as I move more and more to the future house. What to do for this supposed minis blog? Printables!

One thing I have always loved about having a computer is having the ability to design my own printable/ activity pages, teaching aids, greeting cards, etc. These days I have fun with designing wallpapers, flooring, and wall art for my mini projects.

I already have some of my wallpapers available free. (See link in the sidebar.) So I decided to make a regular feature of a mini printable once a month (or maybe more often – we’ll see how it goes.)

This month I have some Cat Wall Art for you. There are four different color combinations on this page. (And, of course, you can always use your own favorite painting app to change colors.) Use this for your mini walls or print it on some fabric for a mini rug. Enjoy!

During the last couple of weeks my husband I have finally gotten back into renovating mode. He has been working on getting us together a bathroom in the new house and I have been gutting the old kitchen to make ready for new drywall and a new ceiling. My husband was not sure at first that tearing down the ceiling was necessary, but, boy oh boy, I am so glad I did. Resting in their final repose above our heads was a mummified squirrel, some mummified mice, a mummified snake (I think?), and a not so mummified deceased bird. Can you say nasty yucky gross?

I took the weekend and did some things I consider fun. Planting flowers, herbs, and seeds on Saturday. Cleaning out the garage on Sunday. Wait! Cleaning the garage is fun? Well, in this case it is. The garage cleaning is at the Victorian house. The house used to be owned by a preschool teacher (and serious packrat) and I made the mistake of purchasing the contents. Most of the stuff is just plain junk, but occasionally there is a surprise. I’ve uncovered an old record player cabinet, some vintage Barbies, a Brownie (as in Girl Scouts) doll, Lincoln logs, an old chair with potential, and a child size chifferobe. The chifferobe and a lot of the preschool furnishings went to a neighbor who loves to repurpose old furniture.

In the course of packing, I rediscovered some old Concord furniture I had tucked away. Back in the nineties, I think it was, Concord came out with a line of furniture that was 1/6 scale/Playscale. I snapped up some for my daughter to counteract all that Barbie pink. Unfortunately, at the time funds were tight (still are!) and I could only get some of the pieces available. You can see a real Ethan Allen Colonial influence here.

Not sure if I want to keep it or sell it. When it comes to Barbie, I prefer 1960s vintage.

My posts are pretty random these days, both in frequency and content. That is the way my life is at the moment.

Still packing and moving things to the new house, also pretty randomly due to things like snow!

(I would much rather be seeing more of these:

and less of the wet white stuff.)

In the course of moving so many things at different times, I am unpacking and reusing a lot of my boxes. I now have one room that looks a lot like this:

Of course, pottery is not the only thing I seem to collect, I rounded all the cats up (minus the black and white ones in the Fascination Station house) for a family photo.

A few days after I took that photo, I found a surprise, or I should say three surprises, spread around the living room floor.

Apparently, the stray cat I took in a little while ago was expecting. Silly me. I had just mentioned to my husband a few days earlier that she looked a little bloated. We were wondering if she was eating too much or had worms. Oops!

Sadly, mom was not at all interested in taking care of these guys and while I tried to feed them things just didn’t work out and they only survived two days. Sigh.

Some time ago I saw on someone’s blog (I wish I remembered whose!) about a creative soul that had repurposed an old dollhouse and used it to store laundry supplies (I think it was laundry supplies!). Well, I guess I am also good at repurposing. See my Thornhill tool cabinet:

Okay, I confess, it’s just plain sad. I bought this kit sometime in the 1990’s after completing the Beacon Hill Greenleaf kit (which is now covered in cobwebs – haunted mansion anyone?).

I had high hopes for doing a proper 18th Century Virginia house. Then I raised children and dogs and cats and there you go. Sometimes I think about selling it. But it is not really a kit nor is it a full house. Yikes.

Am I the only one that has dollhouses around that got neglected for new and more exciting projects?

The weather has been a bit gloomy here of late so I was tickled to see this little flower on an impatiens plant I brought in to overwinter in the house.

Still sorting and packing which sounds really boring, but it actually feels good to see the progress. My dish cabinet in the kitchen now looks like this:

The flaw here is the my “less is more” husband stated that he really liked the cabinets like this. Oops!

Before I packed it up, I just had to try out the 70’s kitchen in the Contemporary Ranch.

Okay, picture it with some accessories and flowered wallpaper. Generally, I’m thinking it works. But, and it is a fairly large but, who puts the fridge in front of the window?

I love the outside look of the Contemporary Ranch, but I think if I did it over again, I would have kit bashed a little more to enlarge the rooms and have the windows make more sense. The odds of this really happening are pretty remote, however. It’s always on to the next project!

While sorting, I found some more of these little guys:

I found the antelope before and even put it in the Fascination Station house. It was exciting to see that I had a few more tucked away. African Safari anyone?

So many of my menus of late have been simple, cheap, and straight forward that I got a wild hair and made some Empanadas last week with a dough from scratch and everything. I used the Fantastic Foods Taco Mix for a base adding in all sorts of other goodies and it was a big hit! The one flaw is that now I have the song “Girl From Ipanema” in my head. One thing has nothing to do with the other, but there you go.

Sandra

P.S. If you come just for the blog, please check out all the Valentine’s Day Fun over at Bry-Back Manor, including Valentine Clipart for those last minute cards!

No, not a new dollhouse. A new cat! (Not that I especially need a new one of either right now.) I finally caught the little gray girl who I had been feeding since last Spring. I had been hoping to woo her into voluntarily coming in the house, but it wasn’t happening. So, I took the plunge just before a cold spell and here she is:

The picture is not the best because, frankly, I am only allowed to get but so close before she bolts under the bed. But, overall, she is adapting to the household and not just hiding in a closet (like the formerly feral cat I caught some years ago).

My packing is still moving (no pun intended) along. I now have many empty cabinets and shelves and many full boxes. (I thought to take a picture of my empty shelves, but who the heck wants to see that.)

Kudos to all the Creatin’ Contest winners over at Miniatures.Com! I am in awe. I am always impressed when folks find the time to start AND finish their entries. I did manage to finish the Fascination Station house, just a month or so AFTER the contest was over. And here is my unfinished entry for the Spring Fling of 2010 (alas, sitting sadly ignored for the last two years):